5 Incredible Ways My Life Changed After Moving Into A Skoolie – Nat
This is a story from Nat’s perspective on 5 ways my life changed after moving into a skoolie. Now, of course, there are more than 5 ways my life has changed after moving into a skoolie, but these are the most significant.
We are going to focus on the 5 most impactful ways my life has changed after moving into a skoolie.
Hygiene – After Moving Into A Skoolie
While living most of my life in a regular house with all the standard utilities available, I was that person who would take 2 showers a day.
One to wake up and feel refreshed before going to work. One at night to cool down and clean up after the day before crawling into my cozy, comfortable bed.
Moving into a skoolie, I had a feeling I would likely be changing that. Maybe up to possibly 1 shower a day or at least every other day.
We moved into our bus, like many do, with some unfinished projects. One of which was plumbing. We stayed at a local campground so it was easier to take a shower every day if I wanted to.
My move away from showering every day started there. It was a walk, kinda dirty and buggy to the showers, lol. Showering with spiders, by the way, is not fun.
Once we put in running water, we still didn’t have our shower set up.
We had to move from the campground which was closing due to the covid mess. We stayed on a friend's property from March thru August and we showered outside under the giant oaks and stars.
It was magical and really something.
Yes, there were spiders, but we were outside. So I did not feel as trapped as I did at the campground.
Here, we showered about every other day unless we got disgusting while working on the bus. We also had a pool available which was super nice.
Once we completed our skoolie shower, we kept up our routine of only showering a couple of times a week.
We had 100 gallons of fresh water on our skoolie. That may seem like a lot of water, and compared to many skoolie builds, it is….unless there are two of you, two dogs and you are not used to conserving water when cooking, cleaning, and showering.
Here is a post we wrote on Skoolie Shower Ideas if you are looking for some skoolie shower inspiration.
Fast forward two years later. I still take a couple of showers per week, and if it is cold, sometimes less than that!
If I do not feel dirty or stinky, I don't take a shower. If I cannot take one at that moment, I will wash up with wipes and water to hold me over.
Minimalism – After Moving Into A Skoolie
When we first contemplated going tiny and moving into a skoolie, we were a few years out. We lived in a 4 bed 2 bath house with 4 of 6 kids.
This was a future dream. We knew we wanted to begin taking steps to downsize so we could be closer to being ready. We began having garage sales and getting rid of things.
Then, we moved from our 4/2 house to a 2/1 apartment.
Later that year we bought our skoolie and began working on converting it into our home. We changed our spending from buying new things for the house to buying things to build out our bus.
We stored our “stuff” in the 2nd bedroom and left it there for 2 years.
Before moving into a skoolie, we knew we would want/need a storage unit to help transition us from 1000 to 210 sq feet.
We rented a 5ft x 5ft storage unit. Filled the apartment dumpster with all the stuff we could not sell or donate.
Before we hit the road and headed out of Florida, we emptied the storage unit. We filled every nook, cranny, and available space on the bus. We still had too much stuff.
In fact, we had to build under-belly storage so we could carry all of our “stuff”.
To be fair, most of this ‘stuff’ is family memorabilia and we just cannot get rid of it.
Finances – After Moving Into A Skoolie
Many people are motivated to create this lifestyle to spend less money on the cost of living items like mortgage/rent/utilities. We certainly looked forward to not spending nearly $1500-1700/month on these things.
We had purchased and built our bus with cash as we would earn it. I
Incurring debt to live a more ‘free’ life did not make sense to us.
Even with the cost of fuel going up, we still spend a lot less money per month than we did in a “sticks and bricks” home, but, even if it was a wash, I think we’d be ok with it.
The trade-off from living that life to living this one is well worth it. We no longer had to worry about making those payments and once we sold our bus, we paid our car off and got rid of that debt as well.
I cannot speak to anyone else because you could live this life spending way more money than you ever did living in a regular house or apartment, but, you could also spend a lot less.
It will vary for each person
We are very happy to see our money fuel our travels and adventures!
Living this life for the past two years has shifted what is important to us and acquiring more ‘things’ is not one of them, so we spend less on ‘things for the house, yard, etc.’
Work – After Moving Into A Skoolie
Work is a big one of how my life changed after moving into a skoolie.
During the 2nd year of our skoolie build project, I went back to work full-time at a local sign shop that I had worked at before quitting real estate with Don.
We thought we could use my income to pay the rent/utilities and grocery bills while using Don’s commissions from real estate to fund the bus build.
This worked well and I worked from Dec to Dec the following year.
We moved onto the bus and I quit before I had another job.
I hunted for remote work and found some! Don and I have both been working remotely now for two years.
While I work part-time for someone else, we both spend time developing passive income streams like this blog to help fund our future life.
We are both in our early 50s and we want to spend less time on the computer and more time adventuring!
We plan on being able to work as little as 10hrs/week at the end of 2-3 years maintaining the more passive income streams we are working on building now.
Routines – After Moving Into A Skoolie
This is a funny one!
Haha, I should say what routine? Go ahead and plan on tossing any routine you have out the window after moving into your skoolie
Not to say this life is chaos, it is not. We do have a routine of sorts, we are just not as rigid with it as we were in our old life.
We are designing a life we love. Building income streams, traveling and exploring all take time so we are working on getting more organized with our schedules so we can indeed have time to do all the things.
We have found we are much more productive when we do not move around a lot, but, we also want to move around a lot, you know, travel! LOL.
All this to say, we are still figuring out how to work like we need to, while still traveling and adventuring.
Other than doing the morning things we all do when we wake up and work after that, I don’t feel like we really have a routine anymore and I don’t mind it so much. It is kinda exciting!
Wrap Up to 5 Ways My Life Changed After Moving Into A Skoolie
At the end of the day when my head hits the pillow and Don and I talk about our day, and what we want to experience and accomplish the next day, I love my life in a skoolie.
I feel like I am a better person. Just from all of the ways, my life has changed after moving into a skoolie.
We have so many adventures and goals to accomplish just up on the horizon. Every day as a nomad prepares us more for the next day ahead.
How do you think your life will change after moving into a skoolie?
Are you dreaming about traveling and moving into a skoolie? Want to know how to live this lifestyle before you retire and feel too old to enjoy it?
We wrote a life-changing post on just how to do that! How to Quit Your Job and Travel Ful Time!
Leave us a comment below, we would love to connect with you!
